The Gnar Towel

This is dedicated to my nephew, Colin, who likes fishing.

A fresh fish taco; a handful of cabbage, warmed tortillas, media crema and hot sauce mixed up, a few limons, and the catch of the day. We've been doing fairly well with the fishing lately, hooking a big dorado on our sail from Melaque to Zihuatanejo. When we started off, dragging a lure from San Francisco all the way to Turtle Bay without a bite, I was a bit worried about whether we'd ever catch anything. I was able to spear calicos, sheepshead and mackerel around Catalina and the San Benitos, which make for great eating, but we were hungry for something bigger. We finally got lucky when we left Turtle Bay, landing a great yellowtail which fed us and several campers in San Juanico for a week. After all those miles of trolling I don't think either of us were quite prepared for getting a big fish onboard and filleting it. Reeling it in is the easy part, once its alongside it has to be gaffed (stabbed in the side of the head with a giant sharp hook) and brought up over the lifelines and onto the deck, a bit of a crap shoot.

Once the fish hits the deck it's a whole new game. We drop sail to slow the boat down and bring the fish in, so Liberte is usually lurching and rolling in the seas like a bathtub, making moving around the boat a combination of a carnival ride, a slip-and-slide, and an obstacle course. We'd heard a few fish tales, so we knew how a big fish could go berserk once it was out of the water and onto the deck of a boat. Luckily a little law enforcement training kicked in and I used my knee to hold the yellowtail down while Amanda grabbed a knife. Sounds like we're a gang of savages. We've also used a towel to keep dorado pacified while we get the boat moving again, we call this the “gnar-towel.” Once the boat is sailing again and I've hosed down a bit of the blood (or in the case of a tuna, horror movie bloodbath), I set to filleting and bagging our catch. Sometimes it's a walk in the park, other times it's trying not to stab myself in the eye while slipping and sliding around the deck and stubbing my toe on everything, with a dead fish. I believe we've gotten our methods down though and the fish is usually in the fridge in 20 minutes.

But what do you do with 30 lbs of fish? Besides the fish taco, we've tried teryiaki tuna with pineapple, tuna casserole, fish red curry, tuna poke, yellowtail sashimi, mahi mahi sauteed with lemon and capers. We've grilled it, fried it, eaten it on rice, on salads and with pasta. Luckily there's other hungry cruisers and campers around that we've been able to share with.

The rest of the seafood we've had while in Mexico has been pretty awesome as well. Shrimp tacos at Christie's in San Juanico, shrimp and pineapple omlette in La Cruz, and get this...shrimp on my cheeseburger in Barra Navidad. I doubt anyone back home is really concerned about our diet, but we're quite well fed.